It’s not FAIR!

Today is Labor Day in the United States, a day that’s often associated with the last big summer feast. It’s a day for cook-outs and hot dogs and watermelon and s’mores.

These are the kinds of days when it’s easy to feel sorry for myself. So unfair! Why do other people get to eat as much as they want on holidays like this? Why can they eat potato chips and dip, or hamburgers on buns, or brownies, or any of a hundred thousand other goodies with sugar and flour in them — but I can’t? Unfair, unfair, unfair. Why did I have to develop this food thing that makes the only safe route for me not eating any of it??!!

I’m sure alcoholics feel similarly. Why do other people get to sit on the beach with a glass of wine to watch the sunset but I don’t? Why do other people get to celebrate at a wedding with champagne and I don’t? Why can’t I have a beer to unwind at the end of the day?

But as the brilliant Belle Robertson (of “Tired of Thinking About Drinking”) reminds us, it’s all a matter of perspective. I don’t all sit around and say “why, why, why, do other people get to do heroin but I never do?” I don’t say, “Why do other people drive 110 miles an hour down the highway and I never do?” Or, “Why can’t I do cocaine before going to work?”

OK, that’s obviously an exaggeration. Still, the reality, when we get right down to it, is that no one has a good reason to put sugar and flour in their body, any more than anyone has a good reason to put ethanol or heroin or fertilizer in their body.

The idea that sugar and flour are required for a celebration is purely a made-up thing. There are a million ways to bring joy and celebration and happiness in your life that have nothing to do with putting chemicals in your body that aren’t good for it.